TUE YOUNG NIHILIST.
A week from that time, and after William Barnwell had made himself
thoroughly familiar with the secrets and the workings of this great and
mysterious order, the order that has shaken thrones and hurled tyrants
to their final account, he started for Germany.
The reader knows something of the cruel sufferings of our hero. Being a
free-born American, a natural hater of tyranny in all its forms, and
enduring it as he did, it is no wonder that he sought revenge, and that
his heart should naturally go out in behalf of oppressed humanity, when
he had tasted of that barbarian oppression himself.
With his identity thoroughly established, his passports all correct, and
his heart full with the new doctrine that his initiation had developed
in him, together with the mission which poor old Batavsky had intrusted
him with, he bade good-by to Russia.
From St. Petersburg he went to Warsaw, and from there to Posen, Germany,
where he felt for the first time since leaving his native land that he
was in the domain of freedom.
Before leaving Russia he had sent home for his entire fortune, and at
Berlin had it converted into German money, and it was so considerable
that he soon became known as the rich cosmopolitan.
Gradually he made his way towards the little hamlet of Merz, near the
border, and when the warm season began he went there with his servant,
horses and carriage (one built to order for a special object), and took
up his residence in a small town patronized almost entirely by the few
travelers who find their way to this part of Germany.
He was now near the alleged hiding-place of Batavsky's rubles, and while
seemingly only rambling over the wild country, he was studying the
diagram that the old man had given him and trying to locate the
hiding-place by the aid of it.
The location most nearly agreeing with the diagram was about a mile from
the little tavern, and every day he would visit it with his gun, or
sometimes with a sketch-book, the better to enable him to throw off
suspicion should he chance to encounter anyone--a very improbable thing,
however, since it was a desolate, uninhabited region, without roads and
with nothing to attract anyone save its cragged grandeur.
Indeed, it was so barren of game that the landlord advised him to go in
any other direction when in search of it.
But day by day he visited it, and the oftener he did so the greater the
fascination of the rugged hills became to him.
The thought that a million rubles lay hidden away somewhere in the
vicinity was a fascination in itself, but the more he went the more he
felt that the spirit of the old exile was hovering about the place.
Often and often he wished that he but possessed the means--which so many
claim nowadays--of communicating with the departed, for the feeling grew
upon him so that he could not resist its influence.
"Batavsky!" he said one day, involuntarily, and the echo of the word
from half a dozen peaks and crags so startled him that he did not try it
again.
But for some reason or other, the last of the echoes was the loudest,
and the name came back to him as clearly as he had spoken it, from a
hill of verdureless rocks some two thousand yards distant:
"Batavsky!"
"Goodness, how distinct!" he mused. "But why more distinct from that
inaccessible hill than from the others? Was it the work of--ah, pshaw! I
am allowing the absurdity of spiritualism to get the better of my
reason. And yet, after all, who knows? There be more things in Heaven
and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. But it was only echo."
He was seated on an opposite eminence, holding the worn old diagram in
his hand, and trying to get at a certain point which would be the key to
the location, but could not find it.
Finally, almost involuntarily, he started down the declivity and began
slowly to make his way towards the forbidding pile of rocks which had
sent back the echo so startlingly.
Why he sought the place he did not know. It was no more promising than
other immediate locations, and besides, he had visited it a day or two
before, although from another direction.
Slowly he approached and surveyed it, comparing it with his diagram. At
length he saw a point that seemed to resemble the one he sought, and
after studying it a moment, started to see if he could find the
succeeding one.
Coming close to a dark opening, he was startled by fierce growls, and
the next instant half a dozen fierce wolves sprang from it, and set upon
him savagely.